Otis starts to stir in my arms, his head turning out to face everyone. To face Carter. “I don’t have a daddy.”
The smile on Conrad’s face is enough to send the poor child into a coma. “Yes you do, Otis. Why, he’s lying right beside you on the floor.”
Carmen flashes a look, her head shaking rigidly.
Keep him turned away. Don’t let him see his father bleeding on the floor.
The message is received. But it’s too late.
Otis is already looking down at his father—radio silent.
Anything is better than silence.
I feel for the kid. Of course, I want to be there for him too, but this is different. No child should watch a biological parent pass away right before their eyes…
Pass away? Carter won’t be doing that anytime soon. All of us have to live at least another forty years before we’re allowed to die. We have Carmen and Otis to protect. We have lives to start living—proper ones where we settle down and remain in one location.
I’m so repulsed by Conrad’s sickening smile that I don’t even see Carmen disappear into the shadows. All I feel is light movement whisking behind me, and the warming scent of apple shampoo. It’s her.
I remain still even though instinct is begging me to snap around and save her from the bad decision she’s about to make.
“I see how it is.” Her feminine voice ripples through the warehouse. “You already ruined my family, so now you make it your mission to ruin other peoples’. Not on my watch.Nothingcomes in between me and Otis. Not even stinking Irish buffoons who think they rule the world.”
An agonizing cry tears through the warehouse.
I zip around and watch the moment Carmen thrusts the knife clean into Conrad’s stomach. I’m so taken aback that I don’t even realize Otis is looking too, his infant eyes wide in horror as blood splats to the floor.
Eventually, after fighting to keep himself stable, Conrad falls. He plummets to the cold warehouse floor. Carmen chokes on air. The knife leaves her frozen hand and clinks to the floor.
Vex’s knife. I turn back around to share his horror, and find the weapon no longer in his hand.
“We have to get Carter out of here,” I say, lunging forward to swing one of his hopeless arms over my shoulder. “Vex, grab the other side. Carmen.” I snap my fingers in her face and hope it’s enough for her to stop hyperventilating. “Take Otis. We need to move.”
No response.
Carmen is shaking too profusely to even look at me.
“Carmen!” Vex tries. He manages to grab some of her attention. It’s a small win that she’s looking his way instead of staring mindlessly into the abyss like she’s been doing ever since Conrad went down. “Carry Otis. We need to get out of here. Now.”
When you join a group of outlaws, nobody tells you how challenging it is to lug a fully grown man over two dozen dead bodies.
Carmen takes the lead, Otis buried in her breast as she steps gingerly over corpses. It’s a never-ending obstacle course.
I step over them myself and with Vex’s help, lift Carter over them. Something in my stomach feels off about tonight, even though we all made it out alive (barely).
Otis shouldn’t have been here. It was Conrad’s fault, nobody else’s, but I feel partly responsible for all of the trauma the boy will now carry through the rest of his life.
I catch a lock of brown hair lifting in the breeze up ahead. The first leak of daylight breaks into the sky and turns Carmen’s hair a beautiful caramel color. I stare at the back of her head and my heart sinks.
She still thinks this is her fault.
She races ahead to put as much distance between us as possible.
I fear we overcame one obstacle just to run into another.
22
CARMEN
